“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” – Deal Me In 2015 Sign Up!

It’s December 21st, the SHORTest day of the year. What better date to take the plunge and sign up for a short story challenge? So, without further ado…

Welcome to the Short Story Reading Challenge, Deal Me In 2015!

Yes, I know you’re being bombarded with news about all sorts of reading challenges, and they all sound like a lot of fun. But here’s a unique challenge where your reading burden is relatively light AND where you still can experience a lot of different authors and genres.

What is the goal of the project?

To read 52 short stories in 2015 (that’s only one per week)

What do I need?

1) Access to at least fifty-two short stories (don’t own any short story collections or anthologies? See links to online resources below)
2) A deck of cards
3) An average of perhaps just thirty minutes of reading time each week

Where do I post* about my stories?

(*You don’t have to post about every single story, of course, but if you have something to say about the story you read any given week, your fellow participants would love to hear it.)

1) On your own blog or website if you have one (I will link to your post at the bottom of my weekly post. I currently plan to do my weekly post on Sundays)

2) if you don’t have a blog or website you may comment on my weekly post, sharing thoughts on your own story – or start one at WordPress or blogspot – it’s easy and free to create a basic blog.

How do I pick which stories to read?

(The 52 stories themselves are totally up to you.) Before you get start reading, come up with a roster of fifty-two stories (you can use any source) and assign each one to a playing card in a standard deck of cards. It can be fun to use different suits for different types of stories, but that is optional. Each “week,” (if you’re like me, you may occasionally fall a story or two behind) you draw a card at random from your deck and that is the story you will read. There are links to last year’s participants’ rosters here if you want to see some examples.

What if I don’t have time to read a story every single week?

Try one of the challenge variations noted below, the Fortnight (or “payday” if you prefer) version is one story every two weeks or the “Full Moon Fever” version with just thirteen stories read or selected on seeing each full moon…

How do I sign up?

Leave a comment below with your URL and I will link you. My first wrap-up post of the year (I post weekly, usually Sunday night or Monday morning) will include links to any new Deal Me In posts and a list of the participants with links to their roster of stories.

What is the purpose?

To have FUN and to be exposed to new authors and stories and maybe get in the habit of reading a short story a week. Isn’t that enough?🙂

The Deal Me In “Fortnight Version” – just use two suits from your deck and assign a story to each card, drawing a card every two weeks. If you get paid bi-weekly, you can use that as a reminder to draw a new card (I guess this makes the fortnight variation a.k.a. The “payday version.”🙂 If you work for “one of those companies” where you only get paid twice a month on the 15th and 30th, e.g., drop two cards or better yet, use a euchre deck!

The Deal Me In “Full Moon Fever Version” – this would be the baby steps way to ease into the Deal Me In routine, basically reading just one story a month (who doesn’t have time for that?). Just use one suit or face cards only and you’re set. Seeing the full moon in the sky can also serve as a reminder – “hey, I need to read my next short story!”

Full moon bother you? You can try the using the new moons, but there are only 12 of them in 2015.🙂

Other participants in the past have added their own wrinkles: Reading a story a week for only half the year, reading two at a time and trying to find a “connection” between them, reading essays or famous speeches. No one’s done it yet, but at breakfast yesterday a friend asked me, can you read poems? That’s another great idea. Wish I’d thought of that. Maybe for DMI 2016…

Last of all, please help spread the word about Deal Me In. It’s been so much more fun the past couple years with others playing along.🙂

Saari said,

I was going to see if I could tweak it a bit since I know I can’t read a short story a week. But you’ve got some options up for 2015 and I like ’em! I’ll most likely go for the fortnightly option. Just need to pick out the stories!

Glad you’re throwing your hat into the ring again, Dale. I think you and Katherine deserve some special recognition for posting about every single story (if I’m not mistaken) in 2014. I missed a few myself, but posted about a higher percentage than ever before.

I am interested, one of my goals in 2015 is to read more short stories. But I am a little worried about the time it will take me to come up with a list and write it all up. Is there a “too late to join” date?

Hi Tracy,
Nope, there’s no real deadline (we had several late-joiners last year) and the “rules” for this challenge are pretty informal.🙂 So, take your time and come up with a good list of wherever size option you choose. Good luck!
-Jay

Thanks to James Reads Books I will be doing this challenge too, but with essays and journalism rather than short stories. My success rate is very low with reading challenges, but I am always ready to fail again (that’s the spirit). I have my list up at readerregards.blogspot.co.nz

I gently listed some poetry & stories inspired by this challenge over at my place today, but I don’t think I’ll have time to actually participate. I want to read them but likely won’t have time to journal about them. I just wanted to thank you for inspiring/reminding me to make time for shorter works. I like the draw a card approach. I’ve got mine split into lists of poetry & short stories. Cheers!🙂

Thanks for commenting Marianne. I’m glad Deal Me In served as a reminder for you to read shorter works. It’s become such a habit for me now to read one story a week, I’ll probably keep it up the rest of my life.

PS I didnt realize until I visited your site that I “know” you from the early days of my blogging. Glad to connect again and I will bookmark your new location.🙂

I’m happy to be taking on this challenge this year; it looks like so much fun! I’ve adjusted it a little and added poems, essays and children’s classics to the short story format, so hopefully that’s okay.

I have think I have enough short-story books in my TBR to pull this off! I think what I’ll do is read them bit by bit (as luck guides me) throughout the year. By end-2015 I should have read several complete books.

I’m up to maybe two shelves of just short story collections – both one author and anthologies – that I’ve proabbly only read about 30% of the stories in. “Deal Me In” became a good habit-forming challenge for me.🙂

[…] The Deal Me In Short Story Challenge – For this challenge, you pick 52 short stories and assign each to a playing card in a regular deck of cards. Then once a week you randomly draw a card and that is the story you read! […]

After reading James’s posts all year, I realized that I have an essay collection I’ve been longing to spend more time with, and it includes exactly 51 essayists! If I split one essayist into two cards, that’ll give me a full deck, so I’m in. I’m going to try to read one a week but will probably post less often. My list should be up later this week!

Hey! I know I didn’t do too well last year but I want to give it another shot this year! I have a question though, are podcasts of short stories acceptable? Because I’ve found a set of New Yorker podcasts of short stories and they seem very interesting.

[…] categories of the reading challenge I’d signed up for. I really tried to make things work for the Deal Me In challenge, but I failed due to my inconsistency issues. I will give it a chance this year though since I do […]

Hi Debra,
As long as you link back to this, the sign-up page, in your post (which you did) I will see the pingback & know you have published a new Deal Me In-related post and will include it in my next weekly wrap up post (usually on mondays) where I link to all the new posts I’m aware of. Eventually, I hope to have a weekly “linky-thing” that participants can just add a link to each week, but I’m not there, technologically, yet.🙂

Great post on Saunders. He’s impressed me with what I’ve read so far, which includes the title story from Tenth of December.

Not at all! We’d be happy to have you join us. (people joined last year half-way through the challenge) You can comment again here on this post when you come up with a ‘roster’ of stories and then I’ll include a link to your roster and/or any posts you write between now and then in the next weekly wrap-up on Monday.

[…] Jay’s Deal Me In Challenge – one short-story per week the whole year. Also a good challenge, although I didn’t blog much about it. Two quick thoughts: 1) German classic short-stories are great and want to read more of them and 2) modern short-stories are obsessed with infidelity! […]